Coalition for San Francisco Neighborhoods
Advocating for a healthy city
By Tim Redmond : 498hills – excerpt
Rafael Mandelman and Joel Engardio have been among the most outspoken foes of a federal court injunction prohibiting the city from criminalizing unhoused people…(more)
And
Why We’re Suing the City: An open letter to Sups. Dorsey, Engardio, and Mandelman
By Jennifer Friedenbach…(more)
By Soleil Ho : sfchronicle – excerpt
On Monday, San Francisco’s Recreation and Parks Department held an open house at Civic Center focused on the city’s plan to revamp the area — a plan that includes the controversial decision to relocate a popular biweekly U.N. Plaza farmers’ market to nearby Fulton Plaza.
About 100 attendees looked at posters depicting stock photos of people doing Zumba in front of City Hall while casually pecking at catered snacks. The hollow plinking of a pingpong ball in play echoed through the room, but the mood was far from leisurely…
Is this what passes for “community engagement” in San Francisco? The big decisions have already been made — and according to advocates, no one knew about the changes to the market until it was too late…
“For them to claim that we’ve been working with them all along? That hasn’t happened,” he said.
Pulliam said it was only after he brought the rumors up to the Civic Center Community Benefit District that the city arranged a meeting with him to share its plan, which he objected to immediately. His suggestion that the market share the plaza with the skate park went unheeded. Since then, city departments haven’t shared any updated maps of the space with him; he had to ask me what they were planning.
The worst part? This quickie play at urban renewal is all just an experiment. If the revamp doesn’t hash out within six months, Pulliam said he was told the farmers’ market can go right back to where it’s been for the past 40 years.
All of this chaos, and all of the people that will have to scramble because of it, is just spaghetti being thrown at the wall by a city that doesn’t seem to give a damn either way…(more)
I’ll bet everyone who ever held a job has experienced a manager who managed by creating chaos. That appears to be the primary goal of our current administration and they are really good at that job.
Unfortunately management by chaos never accomplishes much other than to convince people they don’t need that job. I remember a few times I was trapped and could not wait to leave so I could regain my sanity.
We understand that the city is understaffed and has a long process for hiring that usually takes at least 18 months. That 18 months figure comes up a lot in excuses for the slow process we see in filling empty affordable units and other city programs. How do we get past the 18 months slowdown and management by chaos? Hopefully we will soon have some options in new management styles before we kill off what is left of the “Heart of San Francisco”. The patient needs a transfusion fast. See https://hotcfarmersmarket.org/
By Timothy Karoff : sfgate – excerpt
A beloved farmers market’s tenure in U.N. Plaza is nearing an end.
City officials have elected to move the Heart of the City Farmers’ Market, a staple of Civic Center for 42 years, to the nearby Fulton Street parking lot, making room for a skate area, chess boards, pingpong tables and Teqball (a sport similar to table tennis) tables, according to a press release from the farmers market.
The market will move one street over to Fulton Street between Larkin and Hyde on Sept. 3, and construction of the recreation area is set to wrap up in November. The decision is an attempt at revitalization, with hopes that a vibrant hub of activity will make the area safer, as U.N. Plaza is known as a site for the sale and purchasing of drugs…
“Nobody has a food access program as large as ours,” Steve Pulliam, the market’s executive director, told SFGATE. “Certainly not in California. We have the numbers to prove that.”
Pulliam cited a host of issues with the new location. Compared to the U.N. Plaza location, Fulton Street’s space is limited. He pointed out that in the new location, vendors won’t be able to park their vehicles behind their stalls, leaving them exposed to smashed windows and break-ins. This also puts merchandise at risk, since some vendors use their vehicles to store extra produce…(more)
Why not just have the market extended to more days of the week? Or do some activities that don’t disrupt it on the off-days. Does anyone really think this is going to stop the activities around the BART station?
By John King : sfchronicle – excerpt
The need to build new housing in cities tends to be discussed in simplistic terms — for or against, tall or short, market rate or affordable.
Three recently completed complexes in San Francisco illuminate the core issue that too often gets lost: Such housing should be measured by its capacity to improve people’s lives.
The three buildings do this despite very different settings: Treasure Island, Mission Bay and near ever-troubled Sixth Street. They succeed by providing shelter and services for people who were living on city streets and by enhancing their neighborhoods.
They nurture community, inside and out.
“The idea is not just to house people, but for people to thrive,” said Vanna Whitney of Leddy Maytum Stacy, the architect for the four-story, 140-unit HomeRise at Mission Bay. “We want something that feels like a home and not an institution.”…
The same goal anchors Maceo May Apartments, 104 units of supportive housing on Treasure Island that opened officially in May. Architectural firm Mithun designed it for Swords to Plowshares, and all residents are military veterans who were living on the streets…
The largest and most ambitious of the three newcomers is at 1064 Mission St. between Sixth and Seventh streets, one of the most troubled stretches of San Francisco’s downtown area…
They’re islands of stability and economic diversity in a city where neither is abundant. They’re also models of thoughtful design at both the human and urban scale — a trait that should be encouraged, whoever the residents might be…(more)
By J.K. Dineen : sfchronicle – excerpt
The developer of a $1.2 billion mixed-use project at the corner of Market Street and Van Ness Avenue has suspended construction, the latest blow in a cascade of bad news that has hit the greater Civic Center and Mid-Market neighborhoods in recent years.
Branded as Hayes Point, the 540-foot tower at 30 Van Ness Ave. had been a rare bright spot in a district that has lost high-profile office tenants like Uber, Reddit and Block, as well as the city’s largest Whole Foods, which shut down a year after opening.
Hayes Point was one of the few major construction projects underway in San Francisco at the moment.
City officials have been pushing legislation to revive downtown and Civic Center. Recent moves include cutting some fees and the amount of inclusionary housing in some market-rate projects with the hope of jump-starting construction. Legislation to smooth office-to-residential conversions is also moving ahead…
Hayes Point is a rarity in San Francisco because it is a true mixed-use project, with 333 for-sale condos on top of 290,000 square feet of office space, with arts space and retail on the ground floor.
In a statement, Lendlease Executive General Manager Arden Hearing said his group would be “pausing construction on Hayes Point until markets normalize and we’re able to bring in early tenancy commitments, or a capital partner, or both.”…(more)
RELATED:
S.F. must create 82,000 new homes in 8 years. The city is already behind
By George Kelly : sfstandard – excerpt
Photo by zrants
The mourners gathered Monday morning outside the former Thom’s Natural Foods in San Francisco’s Richmond District, watching as four black-clad, white-gloved men chanted and carried a black-draped coffin down Geary Boulevard.
The casket was adorned with notes listing Thom’s and other dearly departed businesses: Mike’s Chinese Restaurant, Silver Cut Hair Salon, Safe Harbor CPA, M.V. Code coding school, La Vie Vietnamese Restaurant, Mr. B.’s Sewing Machines.
The pallbearers chanted, “Geary Boulevard needs some help! Mayor Breed, we need your help! Jeff Tumlin, stop working against us!
“We’re gathered in memory of our beloved small businesses on Geary Boulevard,” former San Francisco Supervisor Sandra Lee Fewer told the group as the procession came to a stop outside Thom’s between two chairs with signs for San Francisco Mayor London Breed and San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Director of Transit Jeffrey Tumlin. Neither official was present
“We know that many of them could not recover after Covid,” Fewer said of the closed shops. “We are also here to honor the existing small businesses that are trying to build up their business to pre-pandemic levels, and they are not there.”…
Supervisor Ahsha Safaí said Breed and others need to listen to the business owners.
“The mayor needs to listen. The mayor needs to be present. She needs to step up, and she needs to show leadership. That’s what being mayor means,” said Safai, who is challenging Breed in the 2024 election. “Not hiding behind decisions of five appointed commissioners that she controls, and the director that she controls. The power rests with the mayor in this decision. We need leadership in this city right now.”...(more)
Traffic puts eyes on the street. Removing traffic and parking killed the downtown and makes it feel empty and not safe.
By Joe DiMento : sfchronicle – excerpt
Much ink has been spilled in San Francisco about a proposed development at 2700 Sloat Blvd. that would create a 50-story condo in the Outer Sunset, a neighborhood with no buildings over six stories tall. The development likely received its death blow when the Board of Appeals voted down the appeal of the Planning Commission’s rejection of the project.
But even if the Sunset tower never becomes more than an artist’s rendering that proliferated across media outlets, it has already achieved something important — moved our “Housing Overton Window” closer to where it needs to be to alleviate our housing crisis.
In political science, the “Overton window” is the term for the spectrum of acceptable political beliefs in a given system. For decades, it has been perfectly acceptable for neighborhoods like the Outer Sunset to oppose nearly all new multiunit developments. This has created a catastrophic housing shortage to the tune of 3.5 million units statewide — manifesting in astronomical rents and home prices in California and fully one-half of the entire country’s unsheltered homeless population…(more)
by Annie Gaus : sfstandard – excerpt
Attorneys for the Coalition on Homelessness, which accused San Francisco officials of conducting illegal sweeps of homeless encampments, are seeking a settlement that includes filling vacant housing units and eliminating police from the enforcement of laws barring lodging in public.
“We all have a realistic sense of the potential risks and rewards of continued litigation,” wrote attorneys for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area and the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.
In a letter to City Attorney David Chiu, the attorneys laid out a proposed settlement framework with several provisions, including a requirement that the city fill an estimated 1,000 vacant supportive housing units and require that empty units be filled within 30 days
The proposed settlement also includes a provision that the city spend unused funds from Proposition C and Proposition I, two ballot measures intended to boost funding for homelessness services and supportive housing, and funding for affordable housing, respectively…(more)
I would add a demand that the city open more public restrooms to allow the public, including the homeless and demand a more reliable system for picking up trash on the public streets and sidewalks. They could re-purpose the funds that were going to buy expensive new trash cans for some of these purposes.
By Diana Lambert : edsource – excerpt
School districts across the country are increasingly turning to four-day school weeks to save money, increase student attendance and recruit new teachers. But the trend isn’t taking hold in California. Only two tiny, remote California school districts, Leggett Valley Unified in Mendocino County and Big Sur Unified in Monterey County, have shortened the week for students.
The four-day week isn’t feasible for most schools in the state. California’s Education Code requires schools to hold classes five days a week or have their funding reduced. Over the years state legislators have given exemptions to a handful of school districts in remote areas of California, although they must still meet the requirement for annual instructional minutes. Some of the districts that gained approval for a four-day week have reverted to a five-day schedule and others never instituted the truncated week…(more)
By Joe Eskenazi : missionlocal – excerpt
Cruise stoped in the middle of the intersection, photo sent from reader
State likely to approve unfettered autonomous vehicle use this week, Cruise is scaling up its fleet — and cops and firefighters grumble..
Until recently, the driverless cars whirring about San Francisco were a novelty. Then they, too, grew ubiquitous. And, soon, they will be beyond ubiquitous. The California Public Utilities Commission is on Thursday scheduled to vote on allowing autonomous vehicle companies to run driverless taxis 24/7/365. That comes on the heels of a meeting today with disgruntled public safety officials.
But cops and firefighters are also disgruntled because, knowing a little something about politics, they foresee the state’s Public Utilities Commission all but certainly voting to give driverless vehicles full and unfettered access to the city — no matter what cops and firefighters say and no matter what they’ve meticulously documented.
That’s where the smart money is. Or at least lots of money — tremendous amounts of money and power are in play. Which would go a long way toward explaining this pending vote…
“How many autonomous vehicles would it take to blanket a city like San Francisco to have a disruptive service similar to Uber?” asked a participant in a July 25 earnings call for General Motors, the parent company of autonomous vehicle outfit Cruise. “Can you do it with under 1,000 to 2,000 Origins?”
“Origins” are Cruise’s large, autonomous, six-passenger vehicles that don’t come equipped with steering wheels or any trappings of human control. They look a bit like rolling shoe boxes — and they’re already here in San Francisco…(more)
REALTED:
Driverless car freezes, forcing drivers into Valencia Street center bike lane
There is a simple solution to the Robotaxi problem and people may already be gearing up to do it. Lots of workers are striking now. Just refuse to use them. The rental bikes and scooters and cars are all on life support now. There is not much room for profit, especially if they swarm the city with large numbers. Who is going to come to their aide when they are hated and despised by emergency responders? My favorite letter against them so far points out the rather obvious problem with a non-human. Humans can communicate with each other. We cannot communicate with a remote human handler. And the remote human handler is not going to be able to handle a lot of problems at one time. Why not just put the human handlers in the vehicle? They can help with luggage and groceries the way a normal taxi would. Details on the hearing here: https://metermadness.wordpress.com/robotaxis/
